MindTouch adds messaging, enhanced application development to open source collaboration

MindTouch has released MindTouch 2009, an enhanced developer platform for building collaborative enterprise applications and communities. The new version includes four important features for enterprise companies considering open source collaboration:

• A bi-directional messaging bus serves as a switchboard for every system, application and workgroup. Users can set up and receive change notifications when changes are made within MindTouch 2009 or to applications that users plug into MindTouch 2009, such as enterprise systems, databases, office productivity applications, Web services, etc.
• Developers now have the freedom to more efficiently develop rich Internet applications and deploy collaborative apps for business automation.
• Platform extensibility with a front-end plug-in architecture that enables developers to extend or modify MindTouch's front-end without affecting the ability to upgrade the software.
• Custom application development through improved metadata management.

Fulkerson launched MindTouch in 2005 with the idea that the way people operate with collaboration was incredibly inefficient due to the plethora of application and data silos that exist within email, file servers, SaaS applications, CRM systems, etc.

"The dilemma was that all of that information access and sharing is hard, and making sure you know what is most up to date is really hard," Fulkerson said. "But with a collaboration platform, companies can stretch across existing assets and realize more value out of these assets."

The original MindTouch product was released 18 months after the company launch, making MindTouch 2009 largest upgrade in two years. The company currently has more than 10 million users and more than 600K active installations. Fulkerson said customers such as Microsoft, NEC, Amazon and IBM Global Services are using the MindTouch platform due to its simplicity, extensibility and ease of use.

"It looks like a wiki yet behaves like a portal," he said. "You don't need a six-month development process to install this."

Catch a demo of MindTouch 2009 at Web 2.0 Expo booth #408.